The Italian Count's Defiant Bride
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‘No, piccola. Stay. It is easier to talk like this, no?’
Oh, yes. Half seduced by his touch, the mixed pain and pleasure of his endearment made it all too dangerously easy. But, a voice in her brain quickly reminded her, although his mother had been partly to blame for her headlong escape from matrimony it had been Francesco’s words that had actually sent his bride on the run. Words that had remained, engraved in her mind, ever since. Alicia pushed at his restraining arms until he released her, then went back to the chair. Sniffing inelegantly, she mopped away the last of her tears and smiled at him in bleak apology as she drew the cardigan closer.
‘I’m afraid I’ve ruined your handkerchief.’
‘Gran Dio, what does that matter?’ His eyes glittered like blue flames. ‘When you ran from me you ruined my life!’
Alicia met the look head on. ‘I thought I was giving it back to you, Signor Conte. I was sure you’d go back to your mamma and Montedaluca, glad to be free of your unsatisfactory bride. I’m sure the contessa was thrilled.’
‘As I have told you,’ he said harshly, ‘she was not.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘Nevertheless, it is the truth. When she saw my despair, my mother confessed to much regret that she had not behaved well towards you.’
‘To a “freckled schoolgirl with red hair and a figure like a boy”,’ quoted Alicia with deadly accuracy.
Faint colour rose along Francesco’s patrician cheekbones. ‘You overheard?’
‘Except for the Italian for freckles, which I already knew, your mother took good care to speak English.’
‘So that the servants would not understand,’ he said stiffly.
‘But that I would.’ Alicia shrugged. ‘Not that it matters any more, Francesco. That schoolgirl grew up fast.’
‘And no longer has a figure like a boy.’
‘Nor was my hair ever red!’ That was something which had annoyed her almost as much as the rest of the contessa’s comments had hurt.
His eyes moved over her with a look as tactile as a caress. ‘You have matured into an alluring woman, and I was not the only man who thought so tonight.’
‘I see a lot of men in my work,’ she said indifferently.
The eyes slitted. ‘Is there one you see more than others?’
‘Several I look on as friends to share a meal with.’
‘And a bed?’ he demanded.
‘You have no right to ask me that!’
‘I have every right,’ he said through his teeth. ‘I am your husband.’
‘You gave up any right to call yourself that on our wedding night,’ she shot back.
He took in a deep, unsteady breath. ‘Alicia, in my frustration and disilluzione, I uttered words I have regretted bitterly through all the years since. If you could have witnessed my anguish when I found you gone, you would have had your revenge.’
She shrugged impatiently. ‘I wanted escape, not revenge.’
‘And threw your rings on the floor!’
‘Better than having theft added to my sins,’ she retorted. ‘I scrubbed myself, pulled on my old clothes and ran off via the service lift with my back pack, desperate to get away before you came back.’
‘You had no thought that I would be demented, thinking of you alone in Paris?’ Francesco’s jaw tightened. ‘I was such an ogre, Alicia?’
She shrugged. ‘If not an ogre, you were nothing like the man I fell in love with. Though the change had started long before then. When I arrived to stay in Montedaluca before the wedding, you were different, so preoccupied with your business affairs, that you had very little time for me. Almost from the start I began to wonder if I was making a big mistake. But I just didn’t have the courage to put a stop to all the preparations your mother had made. Afterwards I wished to God I had. You said such terrible things; I was heartbroken. But not for long,’ she added quickly. ‘My heart soon healed once I cut you out of it.’
They stared at each other in tense silence.
‘So. Tell me what happened next,’ said Francesco at last.
‘Not much. I spent a long time with Meg, pulling myself together, then I had another holiday alone with Bron in Cornwall. And then I went to college. Only not here in Cardiff, as originally planned.’
‘Because you thought I might trace you there?’
She gave a flippant little laugh. ‘Heavens no, that never occurred to me. I knew you’d rung Bron a few times to ask about me, but because you never came after me—or so I thought—I assumed you were glad to get shot of me. I transferred to the university where Megan was reading law, and I changed to economics because by then an art-history degree with a year’s study in Florence was the last thing I wanted.’ She smiled at him sardonically. ‘You wouldn’t have recognised the convent schoolgirl, Francesco. I was the archetypal student—with body piercing, bare midriff even in the dead of winter, and skirts so short they terrified my mother. I dyed multi-coloured streaks in my hair, drank beer in the union with the rugby team, and partied like mad.’
He sat very still, his eyes locked with hers. ‘You held me responsible for this?’
Alicia nodded vehemently. ‘Of course I did. But after a while Bron read the riot act, and told me I was worrying Megan so much her work was suffering, which meant her parents were worried too. So I put you out of my mind, cut the partying and got down to work myself.’
‘And in time my pride would no longer allow me to continue pleading with Signora Cross for news of you,’ Francesco said bitterly. ‘She is a very strong lady.’
‘Life has shaped her that way.’
‘She has never told you more about your father?’
‘No.’ Suddenly Alicia could take no more. ‘Enough of this, Francesco. Would you please go now?’
He got up at once. ‘Va bene. But I will take you to lunch tomorrow.’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry. I’m having lunch with Megan.’
‘Then I shall come here in the evening.’ His eyes locked on hers. ‘Make very sure you are here, Alicia. I will not return to Montedaluca until the problem is resolved.’
‘Oh, very well,’ she said wearily. ‘But come after dinner, please.’ No way was she going to prepare a meal for him. ‘Do you want to ring for a taxi?’
‘No.’ His jaw tightened. ‘I will relieve you of my unwanted company immediately. A domani.’
‘Goodnight.’ Well aware that she’d offended him, Alicia saw him to the door. She locked up and turned out the lights, and with a grateful sigh made for her bedroom, suddenly so tired it was a struggle to go through her usual routine before she crawled into bed.